is stephen hawking correct? there is no heaven

[OnlyOneUweRosler]

On the subject of the afterlife

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDIiyr5l9cc[/youtube]

 

[ElanJo]

He's certainly correct about the origin of the concept of heaven. He's almost certainly correct that there is no heaven.

 

[pauldominic]

do you mean evidence that does not require a creator paul?

-- Mon May 16, 2011 6:47 pm --



I've lost the will to live now.

In that case why doesn't he STICK to studying SCIENCE.

He's no better than Dawkins if he takes advantage of his position as a scientist to talk about Religion.

Its back to two small words: -

How - Science
Why - Religion

you talk some rubbish at times

you have been talking science to death in your feeble attempts at evidence

so why is it ok for you as mr religion to spout science theory and not the other way round
cheeky son of a gun

-- Mon May 16, 2011 6:00 pm --

We really are in Groundhog territory here.

we certainly are
barmy statements and avoiding questions

ElanJo is far better than you at being a gyroscope.

Come back and tell me why gyroscopes are important.

 

[tonea2003]

do you mean evidence that does not require a creator paul?

-- Mon May 16, 2011 6:47 pm --



I've lost the will to live now.

In that case why doesn't he STICK to studying SCIENCE.

He's no better than Dawkins if he takes advantage of his position as a scientist to talk about Religion.

Its back to two small words: -

How - Science
Why - Religion

you talk some rubbish at times

you have been talking science to death in your feeble attempts at evidence

so why is it ok for you as mr religion to spout science theory and not the other way round
cheeky son of a gun

-- Mon May 16, 2011 6:00 pm --

We really are in Groundhog territory here.

we certainly are
barmy statements and avoiding questions

ElanJo is far better than you at being a gyroscope.

Come back and tell me why gyroscopes are important.

more waffle paul stick with the subject matter please
you do yourself no favours at all.

 

[ElanJo]

On the subject of the afterlife

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDIiyr5l9cc[/youtube]

It never fails to impress me just how eager so many Christians are to shout from the rooftops the following:

"My God is a DICKHEAD!"

 

[pauldominic]

He's certainly correct about the origin of the concept of heaven. He's almost certainly correct that there is no heaven.

That may be a fair assessment, but the numbers are too mind boggling.

Take your pick in answering one of these questions: -

1. If y=1/x, does y ever = 1?
2. What is the largest prime number?
3. What is the square root of -1?

What I love about the universe is that these simple mathematical questions revolve around the number 1.

We do have glimpses of heaven and hell on earth of course.

Hell must be Doris seeing Carlos lift a trophy.

I fully empathise with Professor Hawking because he is an extraordinary genius of a man who has been incapable of experiencing life because of his disabilities.

If there is a heaven, the chorus of angels will deliver a better anthem than anything we can imagine for him.

 

[u2fme2]

every one to there own

 

[BulgarianPride]

He's certainly correct about the origin of the concept of heaven. He's almost certainly correct that there is no heaven.

That may be a fair assessment, but the numbers are too mind boggling.

Tick your pick in answering one of these questions: -

1. If y=1/x, does y ever = 1?
2. What is the largest prime number?
3. What is the square root of -1?

What I love about the universe is that these simple mathematical questions revolve around the number 1.

We do have glimpses of heaven and hell on earth of course.

Hell must be Doris seeing Carlos lift a trophy.

I fully empathise with Professor Hawking because he is an extraordinary genius of a man who has been incapable of experiencing life because of his disabilities.

If there is a heaven, the chorus of angels will deliver a better anthem than anything we can imagine for him.

I replied but it did not post, it logged me out. So i try again.

1.) obviously when x =1 . Did you mean y=0?
2.) infinity. How many numbers are between 0 and 0.0001 ?
3.) j or i.

What do maths have to do with anything? It is a human concept/tool. Any limitations are dealt with accordingly, i.e infinity and complex numbers. Some very beautiful things naturally occur within this tool like exp(2*pi*j)=1 but this is definitely not a godly result.

What do gyroscopes have to do with religion?

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

I'm going to attempt to deconstruct this and get to the bottom of what it is your trying to say.

He's certainly correct about the origin of the concept of heaven. He's almost certainly correct that there is no heaven.

That may be a fair assessment, but the numbers are too mind boggling.

What numbers? Nothing Elanjo just said was about numbers.

Take your pick in answering one of these questions: -

1. If y=1/x, does y ever = 1?
2. What is the largest prime number?
3. What is the square root of -1?

I don't know what these mathematical concepts are to do with heaven. The subject of heaven is not a mathematical concept. If you're getting at the concept of infinity, then that is still nothing to do with heaven, it's simply a mathematical tool that humans can't understand. That doesn't make it in any way 'heavenly'.

What I love about the universe is that these simple mathematical questions revolve around the number 1.

You've picked out 3 examples though, y=3/x also tends to infinity and that has nothing to do with the number 1. Besides, even if they did revolve around the number 1, why is this evidence of heaven? Surely it just means our mathematical system is centred around the concept of the unitary.

We do have glimpses of heaven and hell on earth of course.

Hell must be Doris seeing Carlos lift a trophy.

Glimpses of heaven and hell are the same in your mind as glimpses of good things and bad things then? Just because there is 'good and bad' in the world, why does that mean after you die you go to somewhere good or bad? These again are human concepts and don't in anyway point to something outside of our human understanding.

I fully empathise with Professor Hawking because he is an extraordinary genius of a man who has been incapable of experiencing life because of his disabilities.

If there is a heaven, the chorus of angels will deliver a better anthem than anything we can imagine for him.

...Okay in summary, I'm kind of none the wiser.

You seem to be arguing in support of heaven but you really have nothing other than blind faith with which to support it. Which is admirable in a sense, although it does pervade logic slightly.

If all you have is a wishful thought that there is something to come, then that's fair enough, but you can't justify any knowledge that it's any more than a wishful thought.

I'm not trying to be inflammatory here, some posters have obviously argued with you in the past and I'm just taking the time to try to understand where you're coming from.

 

[pauldominic]

I'm going to attempt to deconstruct this and get to the bottom of what it is your trying to say.

He's certainly correct about the origin of the concept of heaven. He's almost certainly correct that there is no heaven.

That may be a fair assessment, but the numbers are too mind boggling.

What numbers? Nothing Elanjo just said was about numbers.

Take your pick in answering one of these questions: -

1. If y=1/x, does y ever = 1?
2. What is the largest prime number?
3. What is the square root of -1?

I don't know what these mathematical concepts are to do with heaven. The subject of heaven is not a mathematical concept. If you're getting at the concept of infinity, then that is still nothing to do with heaven, it's simply a mathematical tool that humans can't understand. That doesn't make it in any way 'heavenly'.

What I love about the universe is that these simple mathematical questions revolve around the number 1.

You've picked out 3 examples though, y=3/x also tends to infinity and that has nothing to do with the number 1. Besides, even if they did revolve around the number 1, why is this evidence of heaven? Surely it just means our mathematical system is centred around the concept of the unitary.

We do have glimpses of heaven and hell on earth of course.

Hell must be Doris seeing Carlos lift a trophy.

Glimpses of heaven and hell are the same in your mind as glimpses of good things and bad things then? Just because there is 'good and bad' in the world, why does that mean after you die you go to somewhere good or bad? These again are human concepts and don't in anyway point to something outside of our human understanding.

I fully empathise with Professor Hawking because he is an extraordinary genius of a man who has been incapable of experiencing life because of his disabilities.

If there is a heaven, the chorus of angels will deliver a better anthem than anything we can imagine for him.

...Okay in summary, I'm kind of none the wiser.

You seem to be arguing in support of heaven but you really have nothing other than blind faith with which to support it. Which is admirable in a sense, although it does pervade logic slightly.

If all you have is a wishful thought that there is something to come, then that's fair enough, but you can't justify any knowledge that it's any more than a wishful thought.

I'm not trying to be inflammatory here, some posters have obviously argued with you in the past and I'm just taking the time to try to understand where you're coming from.

If there's any problem, tonea2003 created it by starting another thread on the same subject.

I posted this in another thread: -

"Ok Damocles and ElanJo.

Chapter and verse comes from this publication: -

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Systems-Thinking-Practice-Year-Retrospective/dp/0471986062/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1305634314&sr=8-2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Systems-Thinkin ... 314&sr=8-2</a>

Peter was professor of systems engineering at Lancaster University and the basic idea he had was whether the principles of hard systems engineering could be applied to solving more complex real world problems. Systems engineering is the key discipline in companies like BAE for developing Weapons Systems Architectures.

He very quickly realised having done a few case studies that hard systems thinking had its limitations because people don't behave like machines and this led to his development of soft systems methodology as a way of modelling complexity and identifying the properties that emerge at each level in a complexity hierarchy that looks something like this: -

Maths - arguably the most fundamental science underpinning everything above.

Science - Physics, Chemistry, biology, anthropology, botany, astrophysics, astronomy, nuclear physics, climatology, meteorology, evolutionary biology etc etc.

These subjects have generated extraordinary secure and consistently verifiable evidence that is essentially proof in most cases.

Pure scientists who don't like the results will go looking for answers.

Social Science - psychology, geography, history, sociology, criminology, economics, politics, organisational studies, classical studies, linguistics, archaeology, management etc etc

Theology basically stands on its own.

Damocles your are correct in saying that evidence is the currency linking all of these disciplines and also a host of others that I've probably forgotten. Nonetheless, the nature of that evidence changes and there are anchor points of complexity that no-one can escape when studying a particular subject.

The most obvious occurs in the human brain. God bless him, but when you have an illness like Seve had, you can still perform tests to diagnose the problem, develop a prognosis and decide on the optimum intervention. If Seve was 99, the intervention might be different to 54.

Nonetheless, when you switch over to mental health, you can't diagnose it like cancer.

Social scientists have the same motivation as any scientist - they want to understand the nature of what it is they're investigating and would far prefer sticking to the research question, diagram, method, results and conclusion.

The problem is that if people are aware that they are guinea pigs, that might change their behaviour and also the scientist may try to be objective but is still another human being with his or her life experiences, motivations and prejudices etc etc.

One thing is for certain. Human beings have enquiring minds and want to identify questions that they can find answers to. That is what distinguishes humanity from every other species on the planet which is why I gave chillingham wild cattle as a fundamental example of evolution working today.

Because social science has these unavoidable problems, postgraduate university qualifications in particular come from the quality of the research process and quantification is awesome if possible.

Its still scientific but extra work is necessary. You have to identify your question and objectives, develop and justify a methodology, extract and implement the method including target community, sample of people, nature of sample, frequency etc etc.

Evidence is still the same currency rather than proof.

Theology is the most difficult subject of all because it asks the most fundamental question(S).

Why does the universe exist?
Why does intelligent life on earth exist?

Theology looks to lower levels of complexity to provide evidence in favour or against the existence of a deity."

and this ...

"Theology is simply the name we've given to a subject which poses humongously big questions. No other species is capable of posing and/or investigating such issues.

I included derivative subjects like meteorology simply to illustrate that there are finer points of complexity even within these subject domains.

It would be a brave forecaster who was able to say that at a precise date, time, location, the ambient temperature will be 19.79226543 degrees celsius.

Theology certainly isn't using the scientific method although some would say string theorists observing the multiverse are theologians!!!

My point about theology is that some questions cross over boundaries of complexity. For example, the provision of DNA or fingerprint evidence on the murder weapon is more persuasive than anything a witness can say as to the guilt of a defendant because it occupies a place in the lower levels of complexity - scientific rather than social scientific.

Theology is looking everywhere to provide evidence of variable credibility as to the existence or otherwise of a deity and if so, what is the nature of this deity.

Cosmic fine tuning coming from the domain of astrophysics provides more weight that historical eye-witness account in the bible.

Interestingly evolution provides some. I can certainly imagine someone conceiving a research question as to whether bankers like Sir Fred Goodwin are guilty of the Sin of Greed.

Thats linking Evolution as a life science with social science and religion supplying a definition of the sin.

Personally I would also include the life sciences under the heading of biology and also Chemistry as providing first hand evidence."

The point about heaven is that we as human beings struggle to get our heads round the idea of eternity. The nearest concept is infinity.

I used the mathematical questions as an another example of evidence from the complexity hierarchy.

The answer to all 3 is essentially the same. There's no limit to the largest prime number because there'll always be a bigger one. Its the nature of prime numbers.

Y will increasingly become asymptotic to 1 but never = 1.

There is no square root of -1 so we have to use another branch of arithmetic to cope with that.

People may well disagree with me but even Stephen would because he wrote a book entitled "God created the integers" where he includes a chapter on prime numbers.

I also do recommend these books: -

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Created-Integers-Mathematical-Breakthroughs/dp/014101878X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305635584&sr=8-1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Created-Int ... 584&sr=8-1</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Primes-unsolved-problem-mathematics/dp/1841155802/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305635625&sr=1-1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Primes-un ... 625&sr=1-1</a>

Deep for someone without a degree in Maths, but there are sections in both where they bring it back to layman's terminology without compromising the quality of their narrative - unlike Dawkins :)